Saturday, September 24, 2011

Afraid of the Dark

I have a confession to make:
I am afraid of the dark.

Now I'm not afraid of the dark in the normal sense. I can walk into a dark room or out into the night and understand that the area hasn't physically changed and that nothing will jump out at me and attack (except for my brother's cat). Mentally, my brain knows not to fear. However, deep down my heart starts doubting anyway. I get fearful that I am left all alone. I think it also helps explain my winter anxiety- winter has the shortest days of the year and so it is dark the longest.

I realized my fear, or at the very minimum my strong distaste, of the dark a few weeks ago. It just sorta occurred to me. And I got thinking: why am I so fearful of the dark? Why don't I like it?

I think it brings on mental claustrophobia. The dark starts to strip things out of your line of vision. When you are in the dark, you can't see the things around. Darkness is around you and all you 100% know is that you are standing there but a blanket of darkness cloaks everything else.Sure, we have faith that everything around us is the same as what it was when the lights were on. We rarely have reason to doubt that something has changed with the cover of the night. But I still don't like it. I can't see the strangers walking down the street at night, I can't see that uneven bump in my path that I need to step over, I'll run into things with my clumsy feet and then I will most likely trip and fall.

My relationship with God is like that too. In the lighter times, I have no reason to doubt that God is present with me and that He cares for me and has undying, relentless love for me. But when darker times come, I am left standing there with a slight fear. I can't see what is around me, I can't see what God is doing but I'm desperately trying to trust Him that nothing has changed. I have to trust that when I do trip God will still be with me to help pick me up.

Maybe that is why Christ said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." Maybe Jesus is my light bulb, or my flashlight. A flashlight shines a beam of light in the direction you point it so that it shows you what's lying ahead. Jesus already lived a life here on earth to show us what's lying ahead. His example can guide me and show me when I should turn because there is a bend in the path. His example also reveals and reassures me that God always IS present so that I won't be living life alone in the dark.

Since I started my job, I've been waking up early in the morning to get to work. I wake up with the sun rising and go to bed when it is dark. I used to wake up at like 10 or noon and stay awake until the sun was almost rising the next day. I was practically living in the nighttime instead of the day. That made me miserable. I am now making a conscious effort to live life when it's light outside instead of at night. More people should try that. It's much nicer. I can't avoid the darkness (because in the winter it's dark at like 4:45 or 5) but when the darkness does come I know it's time for me to start calming down for the evening to rest for the night. Spiritually, I should learn how to do that too. When the dark times begin to come, instead of panicking I will remain calm and curl up with my Jesus to rest and trust that God will still take care of me.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Emotional Boundaries: A Letter to my Brothers-in-Christ

I am documenting this because apparently guys don’t understand us girls. I am sad that I have seen so many of my girlfriends destroyed and hurt by this so here goes nothing. Guys, here’s a little 411 about girls that apparently you don’t understand nor have any of you ever figured out:

Emotional boundaries and emotional attraction are to girls the way physical attraction and physical boundaries are to guys.

Let me try to elaborate. Girls are taught to dress modestly because guys often are attracted to physical beauty and stumble into temptation more often due to crossing physical boundaries be it through action or sight. While I think it’s more complicated than that, I will say I agree with this in a general sense this based on how my guy friends act. Us girls are taught to cover ourselves up so as to not tempt our brothers and so we can guard our brothers’-in-Christ spirits. I am aware that us girls do not always protect our brothers’ hearts like we should and that we fail in this area. We aren’t perfect. I’m not trying to blame guys, I’m just wondering if guys realize what they are doing to girls when they are, possibly unknowingly, leading them on.

My question is: Are guys instructed to guard our hearts so as not to tempt us girls in a similar way that is appropriately fitted for how girls operate?

I am more attracted to guys who stop and talk and get to know me than guys who are good-looking. Guys who chat me up and open themselves up to me make me swoon. Girls’ emotions get wrapped up into our friendships and relationships. We strongly desire feeling loved and reciprocating love. I believe it stems from the fall in Genesis 3, verse 16 when God told Eve, “Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.” We crave this emotional attachment to men. This is where we do not guard our hearts and stumble into sin because of that craving of a relationship. We seek out friendships with men and we deceive ourselves in thinking that we only need ‘friendship’ and it won’t be so bad. Or we even convince ourselves that maybe someday, the guy will finally fall for us so we don’t even put up the ‘friendship boundary’ that are so vital because we so desperately want more. Guys tend to not get so wrapped up emotionally in comparison and don’t understand why girls ever cared so much. Naturally, these friendships and relationships break apart or fall through and we feel hurt, broken and rejected. is how we get the stereotype of being crazy and over-emotional. This broken friendship or relationship isn’t necessarily the guy’s fault. Men and women operate differently and guys don’t always think what they were doing was causing us to stumble or hurt because if it was done to them, it wouldn’t necessarily affect them the same way. It’s been said to my friend, who then told me, that the difference between men and women is where we find our value. Men find their value in tangible things like a career, skill, hobby, etc. but women find their value in their relationships with their family, friends, and boys.

Girls stumble and get most hurt from emotional harm, not physical harm. Sunitha Krishnan is an advocate in India for rescuing and helping sexually-exploited children. She was gang-raped at age 15 but she said that it wasn’t the act that she remembers that hurt her and made her feel like a victim. It was the bitterness and anger afterwards that harmed her that she remembers the most. It was the emotion and the loneliness she felt afterwards that made her become a victim.

I personally have worked with very young girls who have been sexually abused by men. These girls do not even understand that the physical act of what these men did was a bad thing. They are more harmed by these men that they trusted with how they left. The girls feel it is their fault that the men were disappointed or angry at them and that is why they did what they did. I was driving one 10 year old girl back to her house this past winter while the bread-winner (her step-father) had been arrested for molesting her. We didn’t know how her mother would find a job or find transportation for a job to support this girl. Her family was in trouble. This girl, crying in my car, asked me if she had done something wrong because as she said, ‘It feels as if no one loves me and it’s all my fault that this happened.” She never truly understood until her sex-education class that what had been done physically to her was wrong; she only knew the pain of her emotional hurt.

Ladies must be very careful of emotional boundaries. And gentlemen should respect that. I’m finding more and more that a lot of guys are clueless that girls become significantly more emotionally attached than guys. For example, my friend broke up with his girlfriend this past winter and she kept de-friending and then re-friending him on Facebook. And then she would go through phases where she’d talk to him ‘as friends’ and then not speak to him. I would always yell at my guy friend for answering back and he didn’t understand why. I called him terrible and mean but he said it wasn’t his fault she was crazy. She wasn’t crazy. She was hurt and trying to heal and struggling with desiring any type of relationship with him (including trying to be friends) and he did nothing to respond to that. In fact, he encouraged it by talking back and allowing her emotions to be even more tormented as she desired that relationship again when it wasn’t right. When she finally gave up and stopped trying to contact him, I said ‘good for her.’ He still didn’t get it.

Unfortunately, some guys have figured this out and use this to their advantage; they are called flirts and they ‘lead girls on’. They mess with our hearts purposely to get attention and then leave when they get what they want, leaving us hurt and our spirits beat-up. I have a nameless friend who just experience this. This guy started flirting with her. She had a talk with him to clarify his actions and he told her that he was serious about his feelings for her and his faith in Christ and he wasn’t going to try to hurt her. So they talked and hung out for about 2 or 3 weeks. Then, all of a sudden, he had ‘bronchitis’ and couldn’t call her on the phone. A week later he responds to her text which asked how he was by saying, ‘I’m great! Just getting my life settled here in California.” Yes, he picked up and left the East Coast and isn’t planning on coming back for a long time after leading her on. Not cool. It will take all of my strength in November when I’m in California for a work trip not to hunt him down and throw a rock at him.

In order for us to heal and feel like beautiful women of God, we need to guard our hearts. Proverbs 4:23 says, “Above all, guard your hearts for everything you do flows from it.” For girls this means for us to remember that our value and worth is not in our relationships but in Christ. The only place we can be the women we were designed to be is in Christ. Our brothers need to help us with this with the realization that this issues is a heart issues which they can’t fix but they can help protect us.

And so, Brothers-in-Christ, I beg you to stop tempting us. Stop opening up communication and stop allowing these deep friendships to develop when you do not desire anything more because for girls, deep friendship means commitment and commitment means intimacy. If you don’t desire intimacy, don’t let that relationship get deep. Don’t deepen a friendship without clarifying that you don’t desire anything more and even then, realize that with the “DTR” that girls will still read into your actions with the thought “maybe he’s changing his mind.” We will believe your actions before we believe your words. We can’t have guys messing with our emotions. Just like how we cover up ourselves for you so you aren’t tempted as easily, we need you to learn when to stop talking to us and we need you to stop encouraging us to talk to you. Granted, we don’t always guard your hearts through modesty as well as we should; we are still insecure and sometimes we like the attention we get from our beauty. This is probably similar for guys; guys are insecure too and probably like the attention they get from being our friends.

I am asking that you become aware of how ladies function if you weren’t already aware so that you can show us love and so that you can love us well by protecting us and showing us Christ. I am asking you to stop unintentionally leading us on. My friend’s ex-girlfriend was struggling with this break-up for months and she finally learned that she couldn’t be friends with him. It would’ve been a whole lot easier for the girl’s heart to heal if my friend guarded her heart more after the break-up; unfortunately he didn’t understand why she was struggling so much with getting over their relationship.

Don’t think it’s funny to let ‘crazy’ girls deal with their emotional mess and go back and forth in anguish.  It is your responsibility as our brothers in Christ to guard our hearts by stop talking to us when we need to heal. You were designed by God to be leaders in households. It is therefore also your responsibility to not lead on girls by talking to us and flirting with us just because you want that emotional attention. When you realize you are not interested in a girl, stop leading her on and put up those emotional boundaries.

I understand that guys also need to open themselves up and that they desire relationships with open communication. I also understand that guys when they hang out with other guys don’t always talk to each other. It’s against the ‘bro code’ or something and so guys seek out girls because they need to open up. Do not continue seeking out those emotional friendships with girls. You are hurting us in ways that you do not even realize. The damage you are doing is the same as if one of your sisters in Christ were to walk up to you dressed in a way that tempts you just to get your attention, even though she isn’t interested in dating you.  She would be using your weakness to get the attention she is seeking, which is what you are doing when you are pursuing deep friendships with girls that you truly only see as friends. Please stop. Learn to open yourself up instead to your brothers. Find a brother in Christ and ask him to be an accountability partner. It might be awkward at first but it is by far healthier. Jesus had 3 bestest friends in his inner circle and all 3 were men. Perhaps we should learn by his example.

Also, realize what it will look like when you do become serious about a girl. With so many emotionally open relationships with other girls, you are not guarding your future girlfriend’s, or fiancĂ©’s, or wife’s heart. She will covet that bond you have formed with these other girls and will wonder why you can’t go to her to talk but instead want to go to these other girls. There will be competition and jealousy no matter how hard everyone tries to claim there won’t be. It sucks but that’s what our inner nature is like. Later, you might even wish that you had saved some of the emotional intimacy for her since that is what your wife will desire. This is similar to how a girl with a lot of physical intimacy in her past wishes she had saved some of that physical intimacy for her husband as her husband wanted to be that provider for her.

We are called to be sacrificial in loving others just how Christ showed us sacrificial love. Yes, that does mean opening ourselves up to others. And by being sacrificial it will hurt if we do not lean on God and trust in Him that He will provide. God will protect us and provide for us but we still need to learn how to do love with wisdom and discernment. I believe this is one way to be discerning. Depending on each person and each friendship, this might look differently. I might hang out with my former guy classmates in a different manner than the guys I will meet at my new church knowing that our boundaries are very different. In fact, I am more guarded around the guys at church than my classmates because I have had discussions with my classmates on how I will not seek out any type of relationship without establishing what each person’s faith looks like and they know there cannot be anything other than a casual friendship. It gets messier with Jesus-lovers. I can’t have that same exact conversation. My guard is up as each guy and each relationship will look different. Just how some guys will be tempted by the way a shirt is cut on a girl while others are tempted by holding hands or a kiss. For girls, a girl might be able to handle a friendship with a guy she used to have feelings for but with another guy she may not be able to keep a friendship with him since that friendship might be too toxic for her. [Example: sometimes when a guy feels bad that the girl wants a relationship and he doesn’t, he’ll be friends thinking it will help her heal. Believe it or not, that can leave us more confused and hurt than just cutting us off entirely. We struggle at thinking our value is in that relationship and since that relationship isn’t moving forward, it can lead us to stumble over our heart issues. Sometimes by cutting it off, that temptation is removed (although it still will hurt for a time) and our hearts are protected.]

I truly believe that relationships are beautiful things and something to be encouraged and valued. But I believe that they take work, understanding, discernment and a complete trust in God. And hopefully this makes things less mysterious for guys however I have a feeling that it just made things look even muddier ;)